Turning Waste to Wealth: A Solid Waste Collectors’ Worker Cooperative Run by Youth – From USAID Cooperative Development Program – CLEAR

Kigro Recyclers was established in 2019 by youth entrepreneurs as a waste collection enterprise with a goal to tackle the growing problem of unemployment and garbage collection in the streets of Nairobi, Kenya. The youth do not operate like any other waste collectors’ group – they a worker cooperative, managed and owned by members themselves.

Initially they began by doing door to door garbage collection, residents no longer had to dispose of waste themselves and were willing to pay the youth to do it. Through technical training on cooperatives business management and governance from Cooperatives Leadership Engagement, Advocacy and Research (CLEAR) program at Global Communities, members began establishing themselves as a worker cooperative enterprise of waste collectors.